


Love and other disastrous enchantments

by iridescentjaebum



Category: GOT7
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Angels, Angst, Attempt at Humor, Demons, Fantasy, M/M, yes the angst season has been opened
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:26:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27478765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iridescentjaebum/pseuds/iridescentjaebum
Summary: Jaebeom knows that choices have consequences - and yet, he keeps making all the bad ones.or the one where Jaebeom makes a deal with a demon and throws the entire world upside down. Enters stage left, Mark Tuan to try and save the day.
Relationships: Im Jaebum | JB/Mark Tuan, Park Jinyoung/Jackson Wang
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18





	Love and other disastrous enchantments

**Author's Note:**

> i can't believe i said i'm gonna post a bodyguard/spy au after my last chaptered fic and all i did was write everything but the bodyguard au lmao. anyway, we're headed into the 2nd national lockdown so i do have time to yell into my word document and here's the outcome, enjoy (?) 
> 
> also, alternatively, the one where after like, 4 whole years i've finally embraced it being spelled jaebeom, not jaebum

The first thing Jaebeom notices upon entering his studio apartment is the smell.

Nose-punching, breathtaking _stench_ of a wet dog, which had a field day in the mud. Lots of it.

He shrugs it off though, lightly tossing his keys on a stand in the corridor before heading to the bathroom to wash his hands. The place he’s renting is by no means a new one – the paint on the ceiling and walls are slowly but surely cracking, one window is almost impossible to close, and the entire plumbing system is so rusty and in desperate need of immediate attention; Jaebeom is used to discolored and smelly water from time to time, so he doesn’t think much of the smell, really.

When he turns the bathroom’s tap on, however, the water is crystal clear. No funny colors, no smell, not even limescale. It’s a little odd, but Jaebeom has lived here for the better half of the past decade – he’s sure that there’s still a problem somewhere in the pipes.

Jaebeom is absolutely right, of course – there _is_ a problem; he just doesn’t realize what it is _exactly_ up until he hears glass breaking somewhere in the room, what cannot possibly be a plumbing issue.

His heart drops to his heels – understandably so, since Jaebeom has heard a few neighbors complaining about a recent increase in petty crimes in the area and how the police are absolutely useless. In a bat of an eyelash, Jaebeom is absolutely sure he’s going to get either robbed, murdered, or – if he’s unlucky enough – both at the same time.

Jaebeom figures that since he remembers unlocking his front door, he couldn’t have left it unlocked when he went out in the morning. There’s also no way someone got to the 3rd floor through the window because this side of the building has no balconies or pipes to climb up. But then Jaebeom tells himself he can wonder about all that later, instead, he grabs the only makeshift weapon he can think of in the bathroom – a plastic curtain rod he was meaning to replace the old one in the shower with.

Jaebeom slides out of the bathroom almost as silently and gracefully like a cat, but his heart is pounding like he just sprinted up all nine floors of the building. When he finally musters up the courage to take a glance at his living room ready to meet the potential criminals head-on, however, he has to do a double, then triple take on what he sees – and then the fourth take, just to be completely sure.

There’s a man on his sofa, glass shards swept into a neat pile a bit to the right from him. The said man is wearing an old-fashioned but still solid enough three-piece black suit. His black shoes are polished so well, Jaebeom wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest if he could see his reflection in it.

The only problem with this entire scene – and that’s already excluding the fact that this room is supposed to be empty – is that Jaebeom is looking at… Essentially, he’s looking at himself in a fancy three-piece suit he’s sure he’s never had, wearing shoes Jaebeom knows he’d never buy.

Which should be, well, _impossible_.

Jaebeom, the one who’s standing completely frozen with a curtain rod in his hand, closes his eyes trying to breathe deep. It’s been a long day at work, and he’s been having trouble sleeping lately, being stressed about all the things all the time can do that to you.

 _This is fine._ Normal – not so much, because Jaebeom is clearly _seeing things_ , but fine, nevertheless.

“Hello,” the person on the sofa says, and Jaebeom notices that even though the stranger looks like him, the voice isn’t entirely the same. It’s quite similar, yes, maybe you could trick someone over the phone with it, but in person, it sounds somewhat rough, low. Old. “Sorry about the glass. I’m not particularly good at these things.”

See, Jaebeom has always been very practical and calculating ever since he was a child. He always has a plan on how to act in certain situations – what to do when someone’s injured, when your utilities get shut off, where to file documents for every situation ever, and so on. Apparently, he seems to have a plan for the peculiar situation where he starts hallucinating.

So he puts the curtain rod on the floor, only then noticing the coffee stain on his new carpet he forgot to clean in the morning. Then, Jaebeom slowly takes his phone out of the back pocket of his pants and dials emergency services.

The hallucination in front of Jaebeom smiles, and his battery dies even before he can hear the first ring.

“I’m real,” the person says as if he’d be responding to all the feverish thoughts running through Jaebeom’s mind. The latter doesn’t seem that much convinced, so he adds, “I have a hard time keeping up with your questions. Sit down first.”

Jaebeom doesn’t budge, already regretting letting go of his weapon. The man raises his eyebrow and Jaebeom’s legs bring him to the sofa and bend, so he’d plop onto it _by force_.

“How did you get in here?” Jaebeom asks, relatively calmly, as if he’d be talking with an acquaintance. To his own regret, Jaebeom is still trying to rationalize everything – as he said to himself earlier, it’s been a long day, his legs must be tired. He went to sit on his own accord. 

“Avoiding the big questions, aren’t we,” the stranger chuckles and Jaebeom finally notices that the stench of a wet dog from before is gone. Now the apartment smells like usual – the orange incense Jaebeom has been using for months because he couldn’t stand the moldy smell etched into these walls. “I was torn out of my habitat by surprise, too. The next thing I know, I’m in this barn,” the man says, looking around.

“Your habitat.” Jaebeom quizzically states.

“It would be so much easier to explain everything if you asked me the right questions,” the man says, delighted. Like he’d be enjoying this. “You see, darling, I’m only allowed to tell what I’m asked. Not a word more.”

Jaebeom breathes out, all attempts to calm his racing heart failing miserably. “Who are you?”

“Oh, you’re a smart one,” the man smiles approvingly, playing with a pile of glass with the top of his shoe. “I’m you. I’m a demon.”

“I’m not a demon, though.”

“You’re not. I am.”

“Why are you a demon?”

The man – demon, if you will – frowns as if he’s a little offended by such an absurd question. “Why is this table, a table? Why was the glass I broke, a glass? Why are you, you? We don’t know. I don’t know why I’m a demon either.”

Jaebeom pauses for a second. His phone is on the floor, he must’ve dropped it after he was forced onto—after he _walked and sat down_ on the sofa, thank you very much—battery still dead.

“Why do you look like me?”

“Because I _am_ you, we already went over that,” the demon says, leaning back to stretch his tired muscles. It looks like he’s uncomfortable to stay in such shape, but Jaebeom shoos this thought away. “You see, buddy, everyone has three versions of themselves out there.”

The demon counterpart of Jaebeom tells him that there are three versions of Jaebeom, too. A physical body, Jaebeom prime, if you’re in desperate need to put a label on it. Jaebeom prime is born into the physical world on January 6th, 1994, and walks on this earth for as many years as it is destined while doing the Jaebeom things he’s meant to do.

Then, there’s an angel Jaebeom. Nothing similar to a guardian angel or any good bits of it – angels are supposed to follow the person until they die and then decide what’s going to happen after; whether or not their soul is allowed to leave the physical world and return to its original realm, or not. If not, a ghost is born.

“And then there’s the third version. Demons. Me,” The demon Jaebeom unnecessarily points at himself. “We do all the dirty work if we’re summoned into the world. Literally anything. Demons could be sweeping these streets clean from snow during winter as their task for one reason or another, and you wouldn’t even notice. Still following?”

Jaebeom slowly nods but really, he’s not following anything at all. He’s simply waiting for this episode of his messy brain to end. This entire talk about demons, realms, and primes must’ve come up in one of the fantasy books he’s read. Definitely.

“Where is the angel version of me, then?” he still asks. “If you’re here.”

“Angel Jaebeom,” the demon rolls his eyes as if he’s majorly annoyed, “is now probably really busy doing some dumb shit like reading books, or embroidering something, or whatever.”

Jaebeom raises his eyebrow because none of that sounds dumb. Maybe embroidery is pushing it a little bit, yes, but still not as weird as anything that is going on in this room right now.

“Angels never really leave their realm, unless it’s absolutely needed, but they know everything their physical copy does. Every minute of every day, that’s their job. Their decision at the end of the tunnel is the most important thing, after all. And demons like me are sent here to save your ass.”

“Save my ass,” Jaebeom repeats. “What from?”

“Demons are usually summoned into the physical world when,” the demon pauses as if searching for the right words, but they don’t come. “There’s no nice way to say this, so here goes… You’re dying, buddy.”

Everything comes to halt. Jaebeom’s brain has been working at full capacity to process this entire hallucination as it is, but now it feels like someone has not only turned the light switch of his brain off but also cut off the wires completely.

Dying? As in he, Im Jaebeom, a more or less healthy twenty-six year old who has never smoked a cigarette in his entire life, who drinks sociably but never irresponsibly, who jogs every other morning and doesn’t even remember how junk food tastes like? _Dying?_

_What is his brain trying to conjure here?_

Jaebeom considers going to the next-door neighbor so that _she_ would call an ambulance for him if he himself can’t. Things he’s seeing and hearing cannot be normal, they’re _not even real_.

“I can’t die,” Jaebeom mumbles.

“And you think you’re what, immortal?” the demon Jaebeom snickers, but the sarcastic smile doesn’t really reach his eyes. “Of course you can die. And we’ll die together with you.”

“What?”

The demon kindly explains, but not before taking off the suit jacket. Jaebeom has never thought he’d look so ridiculous with a vest.

“The only way for us, the non-human forms of you, to exist is it to be alive at the same time as the physical body. Once you die, we do, too. The angel you, the demon you – they cease to exist the same minute you let out your last breath. The angel decides on what happens to your soul and all three – or two if you become a ghost – of us get happily flung back into eternity. To put it in simple terms.”

“How can _you_ die? Isn’t the whole point of angels, or demons, that they’re immortal?”

“It’s not in the way you humans understand it,” demon explains. “We get our current form… erased, let’s put it like that. We become like blank canvas again, and then we’re sent to be someone else’s demons or angels. That’s how it goes on and on, and on. On a loop, forever. The erasing part is a pretty painful experience if the rumors are correct, though.”

“So you’ve been someone else’s demon before?”

The answer comes with a shrug.

“I don’t know. That’s the whole point – you have no memories of your previous physical bodies, or that you even had one, to begin with. The thing that’s the most important here is that it’s really _painful_ , and I don’t really enjoy the prospect of it, so it’s in our best interest to keep you alive for as long as possible.”

This doesn’t make much sense to Jaebeom – his head feels like it’s about to explode, but a part of him… A tiny part of Jaebeom starts sinking deep into the voice of his copy. It’s calming, like his own voice of reason, the one that always reminded him to buy groceries or water his plants.

Maybe he’s not really losing it? Maybe it _is_ real? Jaebeom was never the one to argue about supernatural occurrences in life; in fact, he quite enjoyed ghost stories as a kid…

“How do I die?” that’s all Jaebeom asks, though.

“I don’t know,” the demon answer, and feeling Jaebeom’s stare, immediately adds, “I’m not a fortune teller, forget all the things you ever heard about demons. I can only sense some things and show what I’m feeling to you. We do share some things, after all, so here, let me—”

Jaebeom unconsciously moves his head back when the demon tries to touch his forehead, but after an impatient click of the tongue, gives in. It’s a bit surprising, the fact the hand touching him feels warm and comfortable. Not the dead body cold like he expected or the raging hell kind of hot.

It’s only a split moment after when Jaebeom feels like an entire raging hell is indeed unleashed on him.

It’s as if someone would’ve set his lungs on fire and was trying to extinguish it with boiling water. Jaebeom can’t see anything, just mere shadows of people running around; they’re yelling too, and it’s getting hard to breathe. Jaebeom is trying to say something, to yell, but no sounds are coming from his mouth—

Then, everything stops just as abruptly as it started.

When Jaebeom opens his eyes, the demon in front of him looks like nothing has happened. The clock on the wall tells that Jaebeom was out of it for a bit more than half an hour, even though he’d bet on his arm that it was only a few seconds.

It’s still a little bit hard to breathe.

“Any insights from this lovely experience?” the demon asks sarcastically. Jaebeom has no clue what were those feelings or what he saw. “Thought so. Anyway, I’m sure you don’t want to relive any of that seven weeks later, and I don’t want to go through the erasing part, so—”

“Seven weeks?” Jaebeom interrupts the ramble.

“Did I forget to mention it?” the demon pauses and smiles almost apologetically. “Yes, you have seven weeks left.”

“Prove it,” Jaebeom says.

The demon stares at him in disbelief. “How should I prove it to you? We don’t kill people. Intentionally, at least.”

Jaebeom shakes his head, it’s not what he had in mind. “Prove that you’re really a demon and everything’s not my imagination or hallucinations.”

“How? Was the entire thing of how you die not enough proof for you?”

Jaebeom doesn’t know how. Everything’s spinning in his head, so he says the first thing he remembers from his childhood days, from the books and movies he devoured when he was a kid. “The plate on the kitchen counter. Break it.”

The demon version of Jaebeom stands up, and Jaebeom doesn’t know what to expect – ancient spells, lightning bolts, whatever – but surely, he doesn’t expect the demon to walk up to the said counter, take the plate and smash it onto the floor; all that while still looking at Jaebeom a little mockingly.

“What are you doing?” Jaebeom asks.

“Breaking the plate. Obviously.”

“You were supposed to do it without _touching_ it,” Jaebeom deadpans. “Magic, all that.”

The demon only shakes his head. “We’re not very advanced in practical magic, Jaebeom. We have our tricks, but we don’t go around cracking plates or making doors slam you in the face. Though I wish I could do the latter for some, humans are so _uncomfortable_ ,” he says, trying to stretch his back again.

“Then what do demons do?”

“We pull strings back here,” the demon explains. “We ask for deals and only then we’re granted some special permissions to interfere with all kinds of forces to fulfill said deals. We’re like… you call them what, contractors, here?” he laughs. “We only start being useful once under a contract, and as of now, I’m still not under one.”

“Deals?” Jaebeom asks suspiciously. “So you’re here to make a deal.”

The demon victoriously throws his hands in the air.

“Finally!” he does some weird dance to accompany his words, and Jaebeom has never been so weirded out than now, seeing himself trying to dance. “Yes, as a caring gesture from your friendly neighborhood demon, I’ve tried to negotiate your death and got you a special deal.”

Caring gesture his ass, but Jaebeom doesn’t have to know it yet.

“And what is that special deal?”

“After those seven weeks pass, you can keep adding a week more to your life, but in return, you’ll have to make one thing disappear from the world. For example, if you want one additional week, you get one thing taken out of here like it never existed. If you want two weeks, you’ll get two things taken away.”

“What exactly are the things I’d have to sacrifice?” Jaebeom asks.

The demon is silent for a moment as if picking the right words.

“Just… Something. Maybe there will be no flowers anymore. Maybe you have a hidden hatred for swimming pools. These kinds of things.”

Jaebeom nods. Even if it is a hallucination, after all, he might as well give it a full swing.

“How do we seal the deal? Do I have to sacrifice blood or something?

The demon mockingly stares at him again, “Do you think demons are barbarians? Give me your hand.”

Jaebeom reaches out his palm as he’s told. It burns for a second while the demon is holding it, but soon it’s over – and Jaebeom can see only strange green dots on his hand. If you look at it from a certain angle, it sort of reminds of a bird.

“And we’re all set,” the demon announces, satisfied. “I can finally go back and get rid of this hideous – no offense – form, and I’m going to see you after those seven weeks. You’ll have time to process everything and we’ll see how it’s going. Maybe, if you’re going to be a good boy, I’m going to bring the angel part of you with me, too.”

“Great,” Jaebeom sighs, feeling like he’s scheduling a doctor’s appointment. There’s still humor in his voice, though, as he says, “Can’t wait to get rid of pineapple pizza in a few months.”

The demon’s smile is guilty and only then Jaebeom gets suspicious.

He’s read a lot of fantasy books when he was little, and if there was one thing he absolutely should’ve remembered from it, it’s that you should never get involved with a demon. This is simply not going to end well, ever.

“You didn’t ask before making the deal, so I couldn’t tell you. Now that the deal was agreed upon and I have all my powers,” the demon vaguely nods towards the bird-ish shape on Jaebeom’s hand. His voice sounds genuinely sorry, too, “I can tell you that you don’t get to choose the things that are going to disappear. That’s a thing for other entities to decide.”

The demon melts into the air after a short moment; there are only a three-piece suit and a pair of shoes lying on the ground next to a pile of glass shards.

Jaebeom once again feels frozen, wishing that he would’ve gone insane.

**Author's Note:**

> as you might not see immediately, despite the angst tag and jaebeom's impending doomsday, it's not set to be tragically sad, there will be some comedic relief here and there. 
> 
> the premise of demon deals and things disappearing in exchange for more days alive is taken from this japanese movie 'if all cats disappeared from the world" however, i've not seen the movie fully and the fic is not gonna follow the plot of it whatsoever.
> 
> comments are always welcomed??


End file.
